Faced with trains packed with passengers, Raquel Perez, a frequent Metro rider who takes the train to her job in the financial district in Downtown Los Angeles, often finds she cannot board. Like many others attempting to get on the train at Union Station to return to Azusa, Perez instead waits for the next light-rail train, rather than risk jostling and a total loss of personal space.

Packed trains have plagued Metro’s Foothill Gold Line riders since the 11.5-mile extension opened to commuters March 7.

Due to a lack of train cars and contract delays, Metro only had enough cars to run trains to the six new foothill stations every 12 minutes. Put another way, only every other train went out to Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale, Downtown Azusa and APU/Citrus stations during morning and evening peak hours.

Trains running every six minutes between L.A. and Pasadena would turn around at the Sierra Madre Villa Station, forcing eastbound passengers to get off and wait — sometimes for 12 minutes or longer — for the foothill extension train to take them home.

Starting June 27, Foothill Gold Line riders will get some respect.

After receiving numerous complaints about the packed trains and the waiting, the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) got the message. Metro will run every peak hour weekday train to every station, including the six that serve the San Gabriel Valley foothill communities.

The blank spaces in the Metro Gold Line timetables soon will be filled, making schedules easier to read, Metro reported. As more train cars are delivered, there will be more three-car trains, further easing overcrowding.

“This is good news to me. I like the idea,” Perez said, while riding the southbound train from APU/Citrus Avenue at Citrus College to downtown Union Station, where she transfers to the Red Line subway to get to the financial district. “I have my kids and my elderly mom I take care of, so the faster I get home, the better.”

Julie Snodgrass, a water polo coach at Azusa Pacific University, said a train every seven minutes instead of every 12 minutes could mean the difference between making her department meetings or being late. Like many Foothill extension riders boarding in Pasadena, if she missed the train, she would have to wait much longer than Pasadena-to-East L.A. riders who experience more frequent delays.

Someone who commented on the Metro website said he’d board the Sierra Madre Villa bound train, get off at Memorial Park in Old Pasadena, then wait for the next APU/Citrus train to avoid the crush at Union Station.

The new, inclusive schedule — to be released in a few weeks — will avoid passenger zigzagging and confusion, said Dave Sotero, Metro spokesman.

“The issues we were having was people would get out to Sierra Madre Villa and they would be perplexed why they had to (get off) and transfer eastbound. Now, it would make it more seamless to take it to Azusa without that transfer,” Sotero said.

A “Quality of Life” report released by Metro Tuesday shows Gold Line ridership grew 113 percent from 2008 to 2015. Metro reported the Gold Line Foothill Extension ridership has exceeded their expectations. The entire, 31-mile line had 50,219 boardings per weekday this past April, as compared to 41,962 in April 2015.

Sotero points out this does not include weekend ridership, which has been higher than expected, with many riders from Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale and Azusa visiting shopping and dining spots in Old Pasadena, he said.

The report placed the Gold Line second to the Red Line for jobs near Metro rail or bus rapid transit line stations. The report placed 393,079 jobs within a half mile of Gold Line stations; next was the Red Line at 484,569, followed by, in order: Purple Line (387,441); Expo Line (290,430); Green Line (161,852) and Orange Line (136,578).

Steve Scauzillo covers environment and transportation for the Southern California News Group. He has won two journalist of the year awards from the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club and is a recipient of the Aldo Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing on environmental issues. Steve studied biology/chemistry when attending East Meadow High School and Nassau College in New York (he actually loved botany!) and then majored in social ecology at UCI until switching to journalism. He also earned a master's degree in media from Cal State Fullerton. He has been an adjunct professor since 2005. Steve likes to take the train, subway and bicycle – sometimes all three – to assignments and the newsroom. He is married to Karen E. Klein, a former journalist with Los Angeles Daily News, L.A. Times, Bloomberg and the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and now vice president of content management for a bank. They have two grown sons, Andy and Matthew. They live in Pasadena. Steve recently watched all of “Star Trek” the remastered original season one on Amazon, so he has an inner nerd.